Friday, September 24, 2004
Bad News by Phone
Many years ago, when I was in college, I received a long distance phone call from my mother on a Saturday morning. That wasn’t unusual, except that we had spoken by phone just the night before. So as soon as I heard her voice I knew there was bad news. A young cousin of mine had died unexpectedly. I called my boss to arrange for a few days off work, packed a bag, and got on a bus to St. Louis.
This year I was back for another family funeral. At the cemetery, when we finished praying and turned to leave, I saw that we were just a few yards from that young cousin’s grave. I waited at a respectful distance as my aunt and uncle stood beside their daughter in front of their son’s headstone. After twenty-five years, their grief still found its way out into the wintery air.
We all take turns receiving those phone calls that announce the losses that reverberate through our lives for years. Eventually we may even come to expect bad news. When an old friend died suddenly not long ago, someone said, “You’ve reached the age when most of the news you hear about people will be bad news.” That’s especially true when people aren’t keeping in touch. Too often, the only news that gets through then is the big news, the bad news – the health crisis, the divorce, the death. And yet this departed friend was a community and church leader, a family man, a respected member of his profession. I know that the spark of life I admired in him must have given pleasure to others all the days and years I did not see him.
People don’t write letters much anymore, but maybe e-mail and even our quirky weblogs can become ways to share the more ordinary news that makes up the fabric of life. That’s the news we want to hear, anyway, because each of us is bigger than that long illness or that tragic accident. Our everyday actions and our adventures reflect our choices; we are what we think and do and talk about in our daily lives. If we write occasionally, we give each other a chance to know something more real and much better than the bad news that comes suddenly over the phone. And even after the bad news arrives, writing a letter of condolence filled with memories is one of the ways we return to the quality of a person’s life.
I heard last month that a widely-admired writer and former teacher of mine, the poet Donald Justice, had died. I wrote a short commemorative essay to send to a few friends, in which I tried to explain his accomplishments as a writer. I was able to say that he was a master of style and form who crafted poems of understated beauty, playful wit, reserve, and sympathy.
Later, his widow and I traded a couple of notes in which we tried to name what had made him a powerful teacher. He managed, somehow, to respect both the history of great poetry and the apprentice writer’s budding craftsmanship. Living deep in the bad news of his passing just then, we used writing and talking and other rituals to turn back to the person he had been. We took a closer look at the good news of his daily life.
We counter the force of the bad news that way. Instead of only grieving, we also publish the good news. Donald Justice was my teacher. When I read his poems, I still hear the quiet rhythms and the resonance of his deep voice. When I look for the better phrases to preserve in a rough draft, I sometimes feel him watching over my shoulder. When I manage to write a good sentence, I am in his debt.